The aim of UK-REACH (“The United Kingdom Research study into Ethnicity And COVID-19 outcomes in Healthcare workers”) is to understand if, how, and why healthcare workers (HCWs) in the United Kingdom (UK) from ethnic minority groups are at increased risk of poor outcomes from COVID-19. In this article, we present findings from the ethical and legal stream of the study, which undertook qualitative research seeking to understand and address legal, ethical, and social acceptability issues around data protection, privacy, and information (...) governance associated with the linkage of HCWs’ registration data and healthcare data. We interviewed 22 key opinion leaders in healthcare and health research from across the UK in two-to-one semi-structured interviews. Transcripts were coded using qualitative thematic analysis. Participants told us that a significant aspect of Big Data research in public health is varying drivers of mistrust—of the research itself, research staff and funders, and broader concerns of mistrust within participant communities, particularly in the context of COVID-19 and those situated in more marginalised community settings. However, despite the challenges, participants also identified ways in which legally compliant and ethically informed approaches to research can be crafted to mitigate or overcome mistrust and establish greater confidence in Big Data public health research. Overall, our research indicates that a “Big Data Ethics by Design” approach to research in this area can help assure (1) that meaningful community and participant engagement is taking place and that extant challenges are addressed, and (2) that any new challenges or hitherto unknown unknowns can be rapidly and properly considered to ensure potential (but material) harms are identified and minimised where necessary. Our findings indicate such an approach, in turn, will help drive better scientific breakthroughs that translate into medical innovations and effective public health interventions, which benefit the publics studied, including those who are often marginalised in research. (shrink)

This essay explains the inescapability of moral demands. I deny that the individual has genuine reason to comply with these demands only if she has desires that would be served by doing so. Rather, the learning of moral reasons helps to shape and channel self- and other-interested motivations so as to facilitate and promote social cooperation. This shaping happens through the “embedding” of reasons in the intentional objects of motivational propensities. The dominance of the instrumental conception of reason, according to (...) which reasons must be based in desires of the individual, has made it harder to recognize that reasons shape desires. I attempt to undermine this dominance by arguing that the concept of a self that extends over time is constructed to meet the demands of social cooperation. Prudential reasons to act on behalf of the persisting self's desires are often taken to constitute the paradigm of reasons based on desires of the individual. But such reasons, along with the very concept of the persisting self, are constructed to promote human cooperation and to shape the individual's desires. (shrink)

This book is a selection of articles by David Zilberman, a prolific author, whose tragic untimely death did not allow to finish many of his undertakings. Zilberman’s work represents a fresh word in the way of philosophizing or philosophy-building and the technique of modal methodology. This book comprises of thirteen independent articles that are not related by content. The point of thematic convergence of these articles is the way they reflect the new way of methodological thinking through the application (...) and benefits of modalization or modal methodology that unfolds unbound possibilities of philosophic elaborations. By shifting constantly from one position to another, Zilberman disclosed the antinomicity of all types of thought. Such an approach led him to outline for the first time his major attempt to start creating not "systems" but "sums" of philosophies so that the philosophical activity would be able to re-emerge on the slopes of such "sums." The book can be used as a starting point of a discussion, especially in study of philosophy. We imagine it can be used in undergraduate classes on World Philosophies or Intercultural Philosophy courses. With that, it can serve as a useful resource for adding intercultural elements into Western-centered courses. (shrink)

Christopher Boorse is very skeptical of there being a pathocentric internal morality of medicine. Boorse argues that doctors have always engaged in activities other than healing, and so no internal morality of medicine can provide objections to euthanasia, contraception, sterilization, and other practices not aimed at fighting pathologies. Objections to these activities have to come from outside of medicine. I first argue that Boorse fails to appreciate that such widespread practices are compatible with medicine being essentially pathocentric. Then I contend (...) that the pathocentric essence, properly understood, does not prohibit physicians from engaging in actions that are not aimed at combating pathologies, but rather supports an internal morality of medicine that allows medical providers to refuse without penalty to engage in practices that promote pathologies. (shrink)

Friendship was an important topic for classical philosophers; the analysis, Value, And duties of friendship all received considerable attention. But friendship has been a relatively dormant topic among more recent philosophers. This paper (a) presents an analysis of friendship and explains its core elements, (b) discusses several different models for explaining the value of friendship, And (c) argues that there are special duties of friendship and that these aren't based solely on utilitarian considerations.

The Christian conception of Hell as everlasting punishment for past sins is confronted with two charges of unfairness. The first is the inequity of an eternal punishment. The never‐ending punishment seems disproportionate to the finite sin (Kershnar, Lewis, Adams). A second and related problem is that the boundary between sins that send one for all eternity to Hell and those sins that are slightly less bad that are compatible with an eternity in Heaven is arbitrary and thus it is unfair (...) that sinners so alike are treated differently (Sider). Hell, as traditionally conceived, is then claimed to be incompatible with God's traditional attributes such as his commitment to justice, omniscience and omnipotence. The unfairness can be avoided by appealing to God's foreknowledge and a debt/atonement theory of punishment. My view is analogous to refusing to parole the unrepentant. If a wrongdoer is eternally defiant, then he can never be released from Hell for his debt won't ever be paid if he isn't reformed and reconciled with the wronged. So it doesn't matter that his initial sin was a finite wrong not deserving of infinite punishment nor a sin no worse than that of the penitent in Heaven. (shrink)

In their feature article, ‘Moral uncertainty and the farming of human-pig chimeras,’ Koplin and Wilkinson argue that there is a tension between (1) thinking that creating pig-human chimaeras with partly humanised brains as a source of organs for transplantation as morally problematic because of the uncertainty of their moral status and (2) thinking that the raising normal pigs for food is not morally problematic because of the certainty concerning their moral status.1 Koplin and Wilkson claim that the reasons that we (...) are uncertain about the moral status of human-pig chimaeras with partly humanised brains also apply to normal pigs. Our moral uncertainty derives from (1) philosophical uncertainty concerning the characteristics that convey moral status and (2) epistemological uncertainty concerning the extent to which pigs with partly humanised brains or normal pigs possess such characteristics. If we think it is morally problematic to create pigs with humanised brains for organ transplantation, we should also think it is morally problematic to raise normal pigs for food, given our uncertainty about the moral status of both kinds of animals. Their view implies that it would be inconsistent to have moral qualms about creating pigs with humanised brains for organ transplantation but to no such misgivings about raising pigs for food. While I find Koplin and Wilkson’s arguments …. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Abstract Introduction The Tacit ‐ Agreement Approach to Morality as Social Construction Speaker Relativism What it Might Mean for Morality to be Constructed as Part of Human Culture Explaining Moral Commonalities and Differences Across Cultures Relativism and the Meaning of Moral Terms Explaining Intra ‐ Group Disagreement Why Fundamental Intragroup Disagreement Might Be Inevitable References.

In this collection, Stations on the Journey of Inquiry, David Burrell launches a revolutionary reinterpretation of how any inquiry proceeds, boldly critiquing presumptuous theories of knowledge, language, and ethics. While his later publications, Analogy and Philosophical Language (1973) and Aquinas: God and Action (1979), elucidate Aquinas's linguistic theology, these early writings show what often escapes articulation: how one comes to understanding and "takes" a judgment. Although Aquinas serves as an axial figure for Burrell's expansive corpus of scholarship spanning more (...) than fifty years, this selection of essays presents other positions and counterpositions to whom his own philosophical theology is beholden: Plato, Aristotle, Cajetan, Kant, Peirce, Moore, Wittgenstein, Sellars, Weiss, Ross, McInerny, and Lonergan. With renewed interest in philosophy of language by postmodern thinkers as well as in the wake of Mulhall's Stanton Lectures on Wittgenstein and "Grammatical Thomism," the publication of these formative writings proves timely for the academy at large. Burrell invites us to reconsider not only the way in which we conduct an inquiry, but what it is we take language to be and how we take responsibility for what we say. (shrink)

The Hausmans wed an intentional theory of ideas with a modern information theoretic approach in a critical tour of some of the most important issues in the philosophy of mind and some of the most outstanding figures in early modern philosophy.

Focusing on David B. Riazanov career and his pioneering efforts in producing a complete edition of the works of Marx and Engels, the article explains why Riazanov’s variety of Marxism was unacceptable to the Soviet regime, and why from 1924 Lenin was credited with being an outstanding Marxist theoretician, whereas previously he had been regarded only as a skilled political activist. The concept of Leninism as a new stage of Marxism was put forward by Bukharin and elaborated on by (...) Stalin and Zinoviev. Georg Lukács attempted to show that Lenin’s thought had the internal coherence that Bukharin postulated. In support of Lenin’s theoretical credentials, his ‘Philosophical Notebooks’ began to be published from 1925. However, neither Riazanov nor his associate Abram M. Deborin subscribed to the official doctrine that Leninism was a new and higher stage of Marxism. For this stance they fell victim to Stalin’s repression. (shrink)

This book fills a gap in the literature on the Precautionary Principle by placing the principle within the wider context of precautionary reasoning and uses philosophical arguments and case studies to demonstrate when it does—and does not—apply. The book invites the reader to take a step back from the controversy surrounding the Precautionary Principle and consider the overarching rationales for responding to threats to the environment or public health. It provides practical guidance and probing insight for the intended audience, including (...) scholars, students, journalists, and policymakers. (shrink)

In America today, the problem of achieving racial justice--whether through "color-blind" policies or through affirmative action--provokes more noisy name-calling than fruitful deliberation. In Color Conscious, K. Anthony Appiah and Amy Gutmann, two eminent moral and political philosophers, seek to clear the ground for a discussion of the place of race in politics and in our moral lives. Provocative and insightful, their essays tackle different aspects of the question of racial justice; together they provide a compelling response to our nation's most (...) vexing problem.Appiah begins by establishing the problematic nature of the idea of race. He draws on the scholarly consensus that "race" has no legitimate biological basis, exploring the history of its invention as a social category and showing how the concept has been used to explain differences among groups of people by mistakenly attributing various "essences" to them. Appiah argues that, while people of color may still need to gather together, in the face of racism, under the banner of race, they need also to balance carefully the calls of race against the many other dimensions of individual identity; and he suggests, finally, what this might mean for our political life.Gutmann examines alternative political responses to racial injustice. She argues that American politics cannot be fair to all citizens by being color blind because American society is not color blind. Fairness, not color blindness, is a fundamental principle of justice. Whether policies should be color-conscious, class conscious, or both in particular situations, depends on an open-minded assessment of their fairness. Exploring timely issues of university admissions, corporate hiring, and political representation, Gutmann develops a moral perspective that supports a commitment to constitutional democracy.Appiah and Gutmann write candidly and carefully, presenting many-faceted interpretations of a host of controversial issues. Rather than supplying simple answers to complex questions, they offer to citizens of every color principled starting points for the ongoing national discussions about race. (shrink)

The view defended is one sense externalist on the relation between moral reasons and motivation: A's having a moral reason to do X does not necessarily imply that A has a motivation that would support A's doing X via some appropriate deliberative route. However, it is in another sense externalist in holding that there are the kind of moral reasons there are only if the relevant motivational capacities are generally present in human beings, if not in all individuals. The process (...) of socialization is an attempt to embed the recognition of what we have moral reason to do in the intentional content of one's feelings. E.g., learning that about others' suffering embeds their suffering as a reason to help in the intentional content of incipient compassionate feelings. This endows the reason with motivational efficacy while conferring further direction to the feelings in ways that shape us for social cooperation. (shrink)

Green bioethics is an area of research and scholarship that examines the impact of healthcare practices and policies on the environment and emphasises environmental values, such as ecological sustainability and stewardship. Some green bioethicists have argued that healthcare providers should inform patients about the environmental impacts of treatments and advocate for options that minimise adverse impacts. While disclosure of information pertaining to the environmental impacts of treatments could facilitate autonomous decision-making and strengthen the patient–provider relationship in situations where patients have (...) clearly expressed environmental concerns, it may have the opposite effect in other situations if makes patients feel like they are being judged or manipulated. We argue, therefore, that there is not a generalisable duty to disclose environmental impact information to all patients during the consent process. Providers who practice green bioethics should focus on advocating for system-level changes in healthcare financing, organisation and delivery and use discretion when bringing up environmental concerns in their encounters with patients. (shrink)

This paper discusses the economic, legal, moral, and political difficulties in developing drugs for the developing world. It argues that large, global pharmaceutical companies have social responsibilities to the developing world, and that they may exercise these responsibilities by investing in research and development related to diseases that affect developing nations, offering discounts on drug prices, and initiating drug giveaways. However, these social responsibilities are not absolute requirements and may be balanced against other obligations and commitments in light of economic, (...) social, legal, political, and other conditions. How a company decides to exercise its social responsibilities to the developing world depends on the prospects for a reasonable profit and the prospects for a productive business environment. Developing nations can either help or hinder the pharmaceutical industry’s efforts to exercise social responsibility through various policies and practices. To insure that companies can make a reasonable profit, developing nations should honor pharmaceutical product patents and adhere to international intellectual property treaties, such as the Trade‐Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights agreement. To insure the companies have a good business environment, developing nations should try to promote the rule of law, ethical business practices, stable currencies, reliable banking systems, free and open markets, democracy, and other conditions conducive to business. Overall, this paper advocates for reciprocity and cooperation between pharmaceutical companies and developing nations to address the problem of developing drugs for the developing world. In pursuing this cooperative approach, developing nations may use a variety of other techniques to encourage pharmaceutical companies to act responsibly, such as subsidizing pharmaceutical research, helping to design and implement research protocols, providing a guaranteed market, and bulk buying. (shrink)

The growing interest in Africa as well as concerns about negative deviant behaviors and ethnic structures necessitates examination of the effect of ethnic expectations on behavior of employees. In this study we leverage insight from ethnos oblige theory to propose that centralization of ethnic norms moderates the relationship between benevolence expectations and negative deviant behavior. Using a cross-sectional design and data from two countries as well as moderation and cross-cultural analytic techniques, we find support for three-way interactions where the relationship (...) between benevolence and negative deviant behavior is moderated by centralization and culture. We discuss the implications of the findings which support the dynamic perspective of management in Africa. (shrink)

Although managing fairness is a critical concern for organizations, not all managers are predisposed to enact high levels of fairness. Emerging empirical evidence suggests that personality characteristics can be an important antecedent of managers’ fair behavior. However, relatively little attention has been devoted to understand how to promote fairness among managers who are naturally predisposed to engage in lower levels of fairness. Building upon self-awareness theory, we argue that increasing managers’ self-awareness can motivate managers with low trait empathy to engage (...) in greater levels of justice. We test the interactive effects of trait empathy and state self-awareness using an experimental study in which individuals were asked to communicate negative news. In support of our hypothesis, our results indicate that increasing self-awareness through self-focusing situations can help promote interactional justice when communicating negative news for individuals with low trait empathy. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: There are some problems with Lynne Baker’s constitution account of personal identity that become evident when we consider brain transplant thought experiments and two kinds of rare cases of conjoined twins — the first appears to be one organism but two persons and the second seems to involve two organisms associated with one person. To handle the problems arising from brain transplants, the constitution theorist must admit an additional level of constitution between the organism and the person. To resolve (...) the problems posed by the two kinds of conjoined twins, the constitution theorist must accept that constitution is not always a one-to-one relationship. RESUME: La théorie constitutionnelle de l’identité personnelle de Lynne Baker soulève certains problèmes qui deviennent évidents lorsque l’on considère des expériences de pensée sur des transplantations de cerveaux et deux genres de cas rares de jumeaux conjoints — du premier cas paraît s’ensuivre qu’il y a deux personnes pour un seul organisme alors que du deuxième découle qu’une seule personne existe dans deux organismes. Afin d’expliquer les problèmes qui surviennent avec les transplantations de cerveaux, le théoricien de la constitution doit admettre un niveau de constitution intermédiaire entre l’organisme et la personne. Pour résoudre les problèmes que posent les cas de jumeaux conjoints, le théoricien de la constitution doit accepter que la relation de constitution ne se réalise pas toujours entre deux termes. (shrink)

This essay analyzes the concept of public trust in science and offers some guidance for ethicists, scientists, and policymakers who use this idea defend ethical rules or policies pertaining to the conduct of research. While the notion that public trusts science makes sense in the abstract, it may not be sufficiently focused to support the various rules and policies that authors have tried to derive from it, because the public is not a uniform body with a common set of interests. (...) Well-focused arguments that use public trust to support rules or policies for the conduct of research should specify (a) which public is being referred to (e.g. the general public or a specific public, such as a particular community or group); (b) what this public expects from scientists; (c) how the rule or policy will ensure that these expectations are met; and (d) why is it important to meet these expectations. (shrink)

Environmental Health Ethics illuminates the conflicts between protecting the environment and promoting human health. In this study, David B. Resnik develops a method for making ethical decisions on environmental health issues. He applies this method to various issues, including pesticide use, antibiotic resistance, nutrition policy, vegetarianism, urban development, occupational safety, disaster preparedness and global climate change. Resnik provides readers with the scientific and technical background necessary to understand these issues. He explains that environmental health controversies cannot simply be reduced (...) to humanity versus environment and explores the ways in which human values and concerns - health, economic development, rights and justice - interact with environmental protection. (shrink)

The fifteen essays, written by such eminent scholars as Derrida, Heidegger, Deleuze, Klossowski, and Blanchot, focus on the Nietzschean concepts of the Will to ...

Legalized gambling has all the hallmarks of a large-scale moral and social concern, yet, remarkably, philosophers have paid scarce attention to the moral issues surrounding this phenomenon. I believe that this neglect is unjustified. While much could be said about gambling in terms of its social impact, I offer an account on the moral status of gambling and avoid the temptation to give a “thin” account in simply categorizing gambling as “permissible” or “impermissible.” I attempt to assess its impact on (...) character and the moral life, felt in five closely interrelated ways. In particular, I will argue that gambling A) injures self-control, fosters moral incontinence, and indeed courts addiction; B) involves greed; C) shows a disregard for money that is incompatible with responsible care of one’s resources; D) cultivates indifference to others’ welfare; and E) represents a reckless assault on practical rationality, the faculty necessary for the moral life and the discharge of one’s responsibilities. (shrink)

I. Introduction. The debt/atonement model of punishment seeks to reconcile the criminal with his direct victim, as well as the larger community, through restorative mechanisms of restitution and atonement.[i] As a result, it has certain advantages over better known rivals.[ii] Unlike retribution, reform and deterrence, the approach does some good, first and foremost, for the victim of the crime. But it can also benefit the victimizer and indirectly victimized members of the larger community. Competing theories usually profit but one of (...) the three. They also fail to do as well in removing the tension between justice and mercy. Yet even when mercy is not an option, retribution, reform and deterrence can dictate punishments that are intuitively excessive. But the problem isn’t just that of excess. At others times, it seems they will endorse inappropriately lenient responses to crime. I will argue that a properly construed debt/atonement approach, despite its stress on punishment taking the form of restitution, can handle three common objections that it is incapable of providing appropriate punishments. The first is that it cannot justify punishing murder for the dead cannot be compensated. Even if this turns out to be true, surprisingly, it bestows no relative advantage upon rival accounts for if the dead cannot be benefited, then they cannot be harmed, and thus punishing killers who did not harm those they killed will be difficult for any theory to justify. The second objection is that it cannot accommodate our practice of publishing failed attempts where there appears to be no harm when the target didn’t even know the attempt transpired. Ironically, it turns out that only the advocated approach can justify our practice of punishing failed attempts less severely than successes. The third objection is that the theory sometimes advocates making criminals suffer in order to satisfy the vindictive desires of their victims. I’ll argue that so harming criminals is a defensible way to extract the debt payment they owe their victims.. (shrink)

The chapter focusses on the Scottish natural philosophy of the late eighteenth century represented by John Anderson (1726–1796) and John Robison (1739–1805), which is considered a link between Newton’s natural philosophy and nineteenth-century physics in Britain (Kelvin and Maxwell). Anderson and Robison have to be seen in a tradition of Scottish Newtonians established in the seventeenth century by David Gregory and John Keill and specifically shaped in the Mid-eighteenth century through the chemical-physical work of Joseph Black and the common-sense (...) philosophy of Thomas Reid. These latter Newtonians built on Newton’s theory of matter and short-range forces as indicated in Query 31 of his Opticks (Black) but also on his Rules of Reasoning of the second edition of his Principia (Black and Reid) and in this way created the theoretical framework in which Anderson and Robison developed their natural philosophy. In the center of their natural philosophy, which was oriented on experimental investigations, were the manifold open questions of the Baconian sciences of that time - theories of heat, light, electricity, magnetism as well as the understanding of the phlogiston. The chapter thus provides insight into the specific way in which the Newtonian camp participated in early modern natural philosophical speculations about minute particles of matter, fluids, or the propagation of light and heat. (shrink)